The ditty written long ago is more accurate today than when pen met parchment. The exact wording may not be 100% accurate, but here’s how I remember its four lines: “How much I have seen and how much I have read, of the struggles of man to get ahead. But me, I’m busy--both body and mind--in the struggle to keep from getting behind.”
I’m not sure where the summer went, but it is winding down. School supplies are on the shelves, Lunchables are in the display case at the grocery, and tax-free weekend has filled the sneaker store full of giggling kids and whining mothers. You would think the kids would be whining and the mothers giggling, but one must remember who is paying.
Millions of Texas children are heading back to school this month, as early as this week in some districts. The Texas Department of Transportation urges drivers to be especially alert and focused when driving in school zones and near bus stops.
Please pray for rain.
They say that age is just a number, so I suppose churning out my thousandth column with this writing might be comparable to a yawn, wry smile or the lame joke about the needle’s question to the thread in a nudist colony-”Sew what?”
Today, the temperature outside was one hundred and seventy-five degrees. Maybe they said one hundred seventeen, but that’s about the same thing. Potatoes… “Patatas”, Purgatory… Hell. Bottom line, it was too hot. I like to consider myself a nice person, but today I found that I’m not very nice when I’m hot.
We’ve all seen the insurance commercials that warn us not to be like our parents: I don’t want to be that mom that says “let me have your jacket, there’s an empty seat down here,” and maybe I don’t want five of the same sweaters in my closet; however, maybe, in some cases, being like our parents, is okay.
The late Dr. Robert L. Smith and Ethelyn Hughes Smith, his bride, fell short in precious few areas of life, but when they did, it was never by intent. By a few weeks in each case, they missed a 70th wedding anniversary, he failed to attain age 90 and she was just short of her 97th birthday when she died recently.
I take some medicines for an auto-immune condition. I’m not sure what the medicines do, but when I quit taking them a few years ago, the lovely skin and muscle related condition reared its ugly head. I broke out in a rash, my cuticles got crusty, and I could hardly get up out of the bathtub without help. Those pills must be some kind of magic.
Let’s pray for rain. Our land is thirsty!
